This Easter, families across the UK are having to work out if they can pay for a tank of petrol to visit family, or the weekly shop to feed the kids, while the profits of big businesses reach record highs. The ability to cope with the impact of decades of profiteering at our expense and new illegal wars is at rock bottom. Liz Zeidler, Centre for Thriving Places’ Co-Director explores some of the causes and solutions to this crisis and calls for us all to #EndExtraction. 

In the world of personal health and wellbeing, resilience is often compared to a reservoir. When the reservoir is full, we can cope well with the inevitable ups and downs that life throws at us. But if we let that reservoir run down too far, then we soon find ourselves hitting the rocks.

To top up our personal reserves, rather than waiting for a torrent – the lottery win/new job/new romance etc, that we often think will make everything ok – the key is to focus on ensuring a constant drip of replenishing water into your personal reservoir. Time with friends, opportunities to learn something new, spending time in nature, eating well, noticing the small moments of joy or beauty or kindness in the everyday. Keeping our reserves topped up is key to our happiness and to our ability to cope when times get tough.

So what has all this nice wellbeing advice got to do with the economy?

The economy – our collective task of managing our ‘eco’ – our ‘home’ – also needs resilience. We want and need it to thrive in order for it to help us manage all the vital services we individually and collectively rely on. Health, care, education, transport, clean air, worthwhile jobs, food to eat and places to connect with each other. All these things depend on the health and wellbeing of the economy.

And, like us, the economy needs to be strong enough to cope with shocks – as we are seeing in stark relief right now, as the price of oil sky-rockets due to the ego (not eco) driven wars being waged around the world.

Much of economic theory is based on how we keep ‘drip feeding’ the economy. Tax systems that provide a constant flow of money back into the government purse to spend on those foundational services we rely on. Measures to support businesses to continue to employ people so they can keep buying what they need. In principle these and many more measures keep our collective economic reservoir topped up and provide a financial safety net for those most in need.

However, when we look around at our communities and many of our organisations and services, few seem to be thriving. Our NHS is on its knees, our care services are letting down our most vulnerable citizens, our rivers are full of sewage, public transport is unreliable and expensive, housing has become a casino for the rich, even watching our local football team comes at an eye-wateringly cost.

So why, when we personally feel we are giving more and more – at work, in care for our loved ones, and in how much we pay for the basics of life, is our collective reservoir still not protecting us from the rocks at the bottom?

Part of the answer is that huge metaphorical pipes have been laid that are syphoning off vast quantities of the money we each put into our communities and the wider economy. Many of our vital services now have a largely invisible list of private owners, from foreign billionaires to asset management funds: a handful of people drawing out unimaginable profits, dividends and debt payments from the buildings we live and work in, the hospitals and care homes we rely on, the water in our taps and the energy that keeps us warm.

So however much we ‘fiddle’ with the exact rate of tax, or the imaginary solution of ‘endless growth’, our collective reservoir is being sucked dry into the off-shore bank accounts of the few.

With the economy, just as with personal mental health – there is only so long you can keep functioning when your reserves are almost gone. We are heading towards the equivalent of a full breakdown, unless we act fast. We urgently need to cut off the supply to those mega drains that are sucking us all dry.

Extraction is not inevitable, it is enabled. We currently have laws that don’t hold big business to account for polluting our rivers. Procurement policies for our Care System that allow massive profiteering from the needs of vulnerable children. Tax breaks for oil and gas companies that continue to make billions as our bills go through the roof and our environment is wrecked. The richest individuals and companies in the UK paying little or no tax on their wealth while working families foot their bills. Global agri-businesses are encouraged to swamp our food system while local farmers sit on the brink of bankruptcy.

These are choices – choices successive governments have made for forty plus years.

But there is a better way. Every day, the Centre for Thriving Places works with local and regional governments, sectors and communities to help re-wire local systems to support thriving local lives, supported by healthy, regenerative local economies. We work with our partners to highlight the destructive nature of the extractive economy and provide a wealth of solutions that can and are being delivered today. See for example, the many solutions to end profiteering in the social care sector in our report with CLES, the New Economics Foundation and Co-Operatives UK.

We need a healthy, topped up economic reservoir, for our collective good. It is completely within our reach – but we need to urgently come together to stop those that are draining it day in day out for their personal gain.

I’m in – are you?